The Spiritual Practice Called Parenting

The most basic thing is not to have a confrontational relationship with what's going on right now. And that's not only with your children. If you can master that with your children, you can master it anywhere. That is one of the primary ways of dealing with things in a conscious manner, not to internally oppose the isness of this moment.

Hello. Now that I'm up here, my planned question has eluded me, but I have the essence of what I wanted to ask. I have two young children and a very busy house. On a daily basis it feels like working at a nightclub. It is just chaos with two very young children. At the end of the day I feel so exhausted that often I find myself going, I'm so tired and I'm so. And over time that kind of begins to mentally wear. And I don't know how to. I do the meditating. I take quiet moments in the day, but I don't seem to know how to feel, Ah, the day's ended. And that's great because physiologically I am so exhausted. And I wanted to know, is there a pointer that you could offer or even another form of talking to myself or not talking, but whatever it is the response to the intensity of raising two young children, which in time will pass, but in the now I'm in, it is incredibly overwhelming and I cannot seem to stop feeling even when I accept it, I'm kind of getting sick of the accepting of the.

How old are they?

2 and 6.

Well, ideally I would spend some time at your place to observe how you deal with things. And then I could advise you perhaps on how to deal with things in a different way. But this probably is not practical. So you have to be rather than me, you have to be the observing presence in your home. You can imagine that it's me, the awareness in you. So here's Eckhart, which just briefly symbolizes the awareness in me. That's you watching how I deal with situations that arise throughout the day with the children and all the demands of daily life. And that self observation may already be the beginning of a little bit more spaciousness coming in. So you can observe to what extent you just react to every situation. So you are at the mercy of every situation because it triggers a reaction in you rather than having a space of freedom and then respond to the situation. It doesn't necessarily mean that a lot of the time while you're dealing with things that you have to withdraw and sit on a chair or go just a moment, I need to. You probably won't be able to do that and it's not necessary. You can't say I need to take a minute off now for presence. They won't let you. But can you be present? No. Let's see. Since I can't be there, could you give one or two examples of. Because it's always best to look at how it actually arises of a situation and there are probably many during the day that create stress for you. They create that kind of the reactive turmoil.

Yes. Okay. So we. I've gotten the house organized some. Some sort of organized sense. It feels a bit calmer. The I get, you know, the children, they go to nursery school for couple hours a day. They come home and my 2 year old is a 2 year old. He's pumped up and ready to play and throwing stuff around and they love to run and scream and have a good time. That's what they're doing is really having a good time. We have calm down time. But they're brothers, they want to play with the same toy at the same time. So the. It appears and feels not unnormal. It feels like this is just the functioning of children. But the intensity when I'm trying to stay conscious and using my own mind without reacting to them yelling and screaming and fighting over a toy. And then we set up a new system. Okay, this is going to be the new system. And then that quickly changes. So the changing is this. It's like this. It's so fast that my brain that's doing this face expression, this is it. I'm like this. And then they needed the food and then the two year old needs all the needs met. The clothing and the this. And then the six year old wants all the needs met at the same time. And it's just mom at home because dad's not home till 8. And it is so much that my brain feels like it shorts out. And so I do take moments of I'll just stand there with them. That's when they really try and get me going. They know mom is getting peace and so. And they're really great kids, I mean it. But when they see me getting the peace then they want to really get riled up and have a good time. So at the end of the day I just feel knowing that this is a period of time and they grow and it will pass. But at this exact now, the lack of calmness, even amidst a decent schedule, a calm schedule is. Feels really challenging.

Well, the calmness of course has to come from within you. It doesn't come from outside. So one way of Accessing it is to not. It seems to me that this is quite normal, but that you spend a lot of time in an antagonistic relationship with what's happening in the present moment.

Yes, I just discovered that the other day. Yes.

And that is the basis of the dysfunction. It's not what's happening in the present moment, it's your inability, which is not really inability, because you are able, but you just are not practicing it yet, to align yourself with the present moment and whatever is taking place in it and not operate with the underlying assumption that this whatever going. Whatever is going on at this moment should not be going on. Because it's only that underlying assumption that what's going on should not be going on. They're screaming, they're throwing things. Of course, if the mind says this should not be going on, but it is going on, that's how suffering happens and how you then contribute more to the upheavals that are continuously taking place because you can't accept this moment as it is. And so I would suggest to set aside at first brief practice periods. Give yourself 5 minutes, 10 minutes. When you bring so much alertness when the children are there and do what they do, you bring so much alertness into those five or ten minutes that whatever they do is okay. And then you still talk to them, tell them something, whatever you feel you need to do. But it will be in a different way because it doesn't come from a place of non acceptance. Very unconscious parents, and of course you are not one of them. Very unconscious parents get angry with their children. I've seen parents with small children, they knock over a glass at dinner or in a restaurant and the parent gets extremely angry. It's in the nature of a young child not to be able to handle very well. They're not as skillful yet handling physical objects. So it's in their nature to knock things over and spill things. Of course, you still teach them how to hold it and after some time they learn. But obviously they cannot handle things as skillfully and things will get spilled. And I have observed parents getting very angry and even hitting their children and spilling something. That of course is totally. It's a more extreme example. I'm sure that's not what you do, but it's just taking the same dysfunction to more to an extreme. But the underlying dysfunction is to not be at one with the present moment. So instead of feeling that, you need to seek stillness and then they will know that because they interpret it as you're withdrawing attention from them when you go into when you kind of stand still or something like that. And then they make even more noise because they want to get your attention back. So but in this practice they don't even have to notice what you're doing because it's not as a doing as such. It's see if you can immediately complete whatever they do. It's already done. It's already the present moment. You can't argue with what is. And then whatever action you need to take, you take. This is the most basic thing is not to have a confrontational relationship with what's going on right now. And that's not only with your children. If you can master that with your children, you can master it anywhere in other areas of your life because it's for everybody in whatever situation you find yourself in. That is one of the primary ways of dealing with things in a conscious manner. Not to internally oppose the isness of this moment. Basically you're already a master when you live like that. But if you practice for five minutes at a time, then okay, then you're a master for five minutes. And then you might get. You might not succeed even during those five minutes. But then you might. But there will be times when you oh actually feels better to live in this way. And then you get an incentive to practice a bit more. Give yourself instead of don't tell yourself from now on I'm going to be completely present with whatever they do. That's too much. Give yourself small spaces at first and then when you find actually it works, then they grow a little bit, a little bit more space until it becomes second nature and then you're awake. And then bringing up your children will have become a more helpful spiritual practice than 20 years in a meditating in a Zen monastery. So that really it's your spiritual practice. The another thing that is helpful to remember and bear in mind is ultimately bringing up doing what you do with the children. Telling them what you need to tell them and helping them with what they need is all important. But there's something that's more important and that is your state of consciousness behind what you do and say. Or another way of putting it, how you do what you do is more important than what you do. The another how refers to the underlying state of consciousness. So this is really the. What I'm talking about is surrender doesn't mean they can do whatever they like. But internally to be one with what is as it arises, then you will sense a certain peacefulness underneath it all and spaciousness. And you don't even nobody Will even notice by looking at you. If I were there, I probably would. I would looking at you very closely. But so that's the awareness in you growing. And I'm leaving aside now other things that you can that are more of a practical matter. To what extent to create boundaries for their children, to what extent their behavior. Those are things that you can learn from other people. There used to be a thing on television. Well, we haven't had cable in some years, but when we had steel cable, I occasionally saw a weekly episode of. I think it was called Super Nanny. It was an English nanny. She was an actual nanny. And she became quite famous because of that program. Of course it helped that she had a British accent. And so she went into the most dysfunctional families. At first the program would always show the chaos in the house. And mother and father can't deal with things. Oh, everybody's screaming. And then the super nanny would walk in. I don't think she would have said anything what I said, like surrender to the present moment. But she had other ways of very use ways of how one can deal with situations, create certain boundaries, but not too many boundaries. The balance between boundaries for the children of what behavior is acceptable, what is not acceptable. The boundary needs to be wide enough to allow for impulse, creative outflow and trying things out and making mistakes. And yet it needs to be prevent them from bringing total chaos into the house. And those are more external things that you could look at. The Super Nanny is the equivalent of the dog whisperer with the dogs who it's again, Cesar Milan, who I had, as you may know, had a conversation with on our TV a few years ago. He has this ability. He always goes into places with the most dysfunctional dogs. So at first they show you the dog is. And then Cesar Milan comes in and sometimes just. He just looks at them. And then they start to behave differently. So those are intuitive. I believe he does it very intuitively. But to come back then to what I can address here is only the. At the level of consciousness, what your state of consciousness needs to be. In addition to what I said, you may want to look into some external things concerning boundaries and so on. Because some parents, for example, as everybody probably knows, some parents, they tell children not to do something, but when they start whining and shouting or throwing a tantrum after a few minutes they say, okay, then go ahead. So that's teaching them dysfunction already at an early age. Another one. Because then they learn that if they just complain enough and shout enough and show aggression or anger, then they'll get what they want. Another one, of course, is giving attention. Some parents only give attention when something is going wrong. The main way, the main instances when they give attention to their children is just when the children have done something wrong or when they're screaming, then they get attention when they're quiet, the parent is so busy, can't give attention, they've got other things to do. Then the children learn the more I scream or do things wrong or break things or cry. Some children learn that the moment I cry, she comes running. Okay, Then with some children, you can actually see they're not really crying, just, they're just going through the motions. And then the mother comes running, get attention. Ah. What lesson do they learn then when they become adults? Unhappiness works. Unhappiness gets me what I want. They don't know that that's the lesson they learned. It's unconscious. And I had that too for a long time. I was addicted to my unhappiness. And the underlying assumption was that somebody, presumably God, if I was really unhappy, would eventually come and do something about it. That was, I knew that was the underlying assumption and why there was so much unhappiness. So people often, basically, they think unhappiness works the adult. But the adult may have learned as a child that unhappiness works. And that's because that's what their parents taught them unconsciously. So the adult. And some people are stuck with that pattern until they die. So they get, they complain and the pain body rises up and think, if I'm really, I really have to be more unhappy because it's not working yet, but it will work. And of course, when you're an adult, the opposite is true. When you are in that state of consciousness, nothing really works. So don't teach the wrong lessons for the rest of their life. And attention giving is vital. And again, just mention it again, don't just give attention when there's something going wrong or when they cry or shout. It's vital to give real attention when you have a quiet moment together. And the reason why there are no quiet moments, the children don't even know what it is because the parents don't give them any quiet moments. The life seems to be so demanding life around them that parents don't. It's only when something needs to be done or something needs to be put right, or they need to stop them from doing something, then attention is given. So give attention not when they're doing something wrong, but when they're just sitting there There's a moment of. And then you talk. You look at them. There are parents who only. Whatever interaction they have with their children is to put about either telling them what to do or not to do. Now you do this. Stop doing that. Now do that. You haven't done that yet. Do that. In some households, the only thing is to do either do this or don't do that. That's from my superficial observation of things. So there may be a little bit of that in your house too. I don't know. But the quality of the interaction. Well, you know, the expression is an expression. Quality time. It's a little bit of a cliche to spend quality time with someone. What that really means is to be present with someone. That's quality time. It's quality time. It's not watching TV together and have a beer. That's not really not quality time. Quality time means no time. It's present. Giving your fullest attention to somebody. That's quality no time. So all these. It's wonderful learning for you and of course, for them too. So maybe I will see you again next time and you can give a progress report.

Thank you.

Thank you.